Rules Committee Approves Procedures for House Consideration of Historic Broad Based Tax Relief Bill

July 21, 1999
Rules Committee Approves Procedures for
House Consideration of
Historic Broad Based Tax Relief Bill

WASHINGTON - The House Rules Committee last night approved the floor procedures for House action on H.R. 2488, the "Financial Freedom Act," a $792 billion tax relief bill designed to return billions in projected tax overcharges and provide broad based tax relief to America's families and businesses.
"The American people are paying more taxes to Washington than they need to. This bill sends the tax overcharges back to America's families, farmers and job creating businesses large and small," said Congressman David Dreier (R-CA), Chairman of the House Rules Committee. "Particularly, the capital gains reductions will stimulate more investment, savings and job growth to keep this economy humming and maintain our budget surplus, which is so critical to protecting social security and medicare. Chairman Archer deserves great credit for his tax relief leadership."
The Committee approved a structured rule providing two hours of general debate and the consideration of a Democrat substitute. Adoption of the rule will include House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer's (R-TX) changes to pare the original tax relief bill version down to match the Senate bill's figures and to meet certain procedural requirements for further legislative consideration. The substitute amendment by Mr. Rangel (D-NY) is permitted one hour of debate.
Total debate time for the bill is four hours - one hour on the rule, two hours on the bill and one hour on the Rangel substitute. Further procedural information on the rule is available at the Rules Committee web site: www.house.gov/rules/rule2488.htm. Specifically, the legislation:

reduces income tax rates by 10% for all taxpayers, and reduces the individual capital gains tax rate from 20% to 15% and from 10% to 7.5%;
reduces the marriage penalty for 42 million American families by raising the standard deduction for married couples to twice that of individuals;
gradually eliminates the gift and estate tax over 10 years;
improves the affordability of health care and long-term care by providing new deductions and exemptions;
extends certain targeted tax exemptions, such as the research, work opportunity and welfare-to-work credits; and,
authorizes the Department of Housing and Urban Development to create 20 urban and rural "renewal community" tax incentive areas to promote job creation and investment.

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